Connect your account, then chat with AI to run tools.
Turn Mendeley into an AI research workspace: search your library and the global catalog, clean citation metadata, organize folders, attach PDFs, manage annotations, and coordinate shared group libraries.
Try this workflow
Build a literature review shortlist
Search my Mendeley library for papers about retrieval augmented generation, group the strongest matches by theme, and return the citation details, authors, year, source, tags, and any notes that help me decide what to read first.
Opens MCPBundles Studio with this server selected. After sign-in, chat and run tools from the same thread.
Browse all toolsBuilt for
Researchers, PhD students, literature review teams, lab managers, research operations, academic librarians
Build a literature review shortlist
Turns a broad topic into a grounded review queue from your existing library.
Search my Mendeley library for papers about retrieval augmented generation, group the strongest matches by theme, and return the citation details, authors, year, source, tags, and any notes that help me decide what to read first.
Import a discovered paper
Uses catalog discovery for papers that are not already in the library.
Search the Mendeley catalog for this DOI, show me the returned citation metadata, then create a library document from the best match and tell me which fields were imported.
Clean citation metadata
Improves citation hygiene before exporting references or writing.
Find documents in my Mendeley library with missing DOI, journal, author, or publication-year fields, rank the records that most need cleanup, and suggest the exact metadata fields to update.
Organize a project folder
Combines document search, folder creation, and folder membership updates.
Create a folder for my AI safety literature review, search for matching documents, add the strongest matches to the folder, and explain which papers did not fit the scope.
What can an AI agent do with Mendeley now?
It can search your personal or group library, discover papers in the global catalog, create and update citation records, organize folders, upload or download PDF attachments, manage annotations, and handle trash cleanup.
How is catalog search different from library search?
Catalog search finds global bibliographic records that may not be in your account yet. Library search works on documents already saved in your personal or group Mendeley library.
Can it help with literature reviews and systematic reviews?
Yes. A useful pattern is catalog discovery for new papers, library search for saved papers, folder organization for inclusion sets, and metadata cleanup before exporting or writing.
Related editorial
Mendeley Research Workflows with AI
What agents can now do with Mendeley: catalog discovery, citation cleanup, folders, PDFs, annotations, groups, and trash.
Domain knowledge for Mendeley — workflow patterns, data models, and gotchas for your AI agent.
Mendeley is a reference management system for scholarly work. It stores citation metadata separately from uploaded full-text files, organizes records into personal or shared libraries, and supports collaboration through private or invite-only groups.
Add a document to a Mendeley folder. Documents can belong to multiple folders. The document must already exist in the user's library (use upsert_docum...
Permanently delete a Mendeley annotation. This cannot be undone. The document itself is not affected.
Permanently delete a document from the user's Mendeley library. This cannot be undone. Unlike trash_document (which soft-deletes and allows restore), ...
Delete a file attachment from Mendeley. The library document remains; only the uploaded file object is permanently removed and the attachment content ...
Permanently delete a Mendeley folder. Documents inside the folder are NOT deleted — only the folder itself is removed. The documents remain in the use...
Delete a Mendeley group. This is a destructive collaboration action; use only when the group itself should be removed, not just a document or folder i...
Permanently delete a document from Mendeley's trash. Use this only after a document has already been moved to trash; it cannot be restored afterward.
Download a Mendeley file. Mendeley returns a redirect to the binary; the tool follows it and returns content_base64, content_type, size_bytes, file_id...
Get annotations (highlights, sticky notes, comments) from the user's Mendeley library. Filter by document_id to see all annotations on a specific pape...
Search or look up papers in the global Mendeley catalog (crowd-sourced database of millions of academic papers). Two modes: (1) Keyword search — use '...
Get documents from the user's personal Mendeley library (not the global catalog). Pass document_id to retrieve a single document with full metadata, o...
Get file metadata (PDFs, attachments) from the user's Mendeley library. Returns file size, hash, MIME type, and associated document_id — not the file ...
List the document IDs inside a Mendeley folder. Returns an array of {id} objects. To get full document details, pass each ID to get_documents. Use add...
Get folders from the user's Mendeley library. Returns folder name, parent_id (for nested folders), and creation date. To see which documents are insid...
Get Mendeley groups the user is a member of. Groups are shared collections where multiple researchers can collaborate on a reference library. Pass gro...
Get the list of document identifier types recognized by Mendeley (DOI, PubMed ID, ISBN, arXiv, Scopus, etc.). Useful for understanding which identifie...
Get the authenticated user's Mendeley profile. Returns display name, email, institution, academic status, research disciplines, and account verificati...
Get all academic subject areas used in the Mendeley catalog. These categories (e.g. 'Computer Science', 'Physics and Astronomy', 'Medicine and Dentist...
Get documents in the Mendeley trash. These were soft-deleted with trash_document and can be restored with restore_trashed. Pass document_id to retriev...
Remove a document from a Mendeley folder. The document is NOT deleted — it stays in the library and any other folders. To move a document between fold...
Restore a trashed document back to the user's Mendeley library. The citation record returns to the library, but former folder assignments are not rest...
Full-text search across the user's personal Mendeley library. Requires at least one of: query, title, author, source, or abstract. Use 'query' for bro...
Move a document to the Mendeley trash (soft delete). The document is not permanently deleted and can be recovered with restore_trashed. The document i...
Upload a binary file, usually a PDF, and attach it to an existing Mendeley document. The MCP input is JSON-safe base64; the tool decodes it and sends ...
Add a note or annotation to a Mendeley document, or update an existing one. To add a text note to a paper: provide document_id, type='sticky_note', an...
Add a paper to the user's Mendeley library or update an existing one. To create: provide title and type (e.g. 'journal'). Use catalog metadata such as...
Create or rename a Mendeley folder. To create: provide a name (and optionally parent_id to nest it under another folder). To rename or move: provide f...
Create or update a Mendeley group, the shared-library container for collaborative documents and folders. Create with name plus optional description, p...
Mendeley is a reference management software that allows researchers to organize and share research papers, as well as collaborate on research projects. Use it for managing citations and accessing scholarly articles. It provides 28 tools that AI agents can use through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Add the MCPBundles server URL to your MCP client configuration (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, etc.). The URL format is: https://mcp.mcpbundles.com/bundle/mendeley. Authentication is handled automatically.
Mendeley provides 28 tools that can be called by AI agents, along with a SKILL.md that gives your AI agent domain knowledge about when and how to use them.
Mendeley uses One-click sign in. Mendeley requires credentials. Connect via MCPBundles and authentication is handled automatically.
It can search your personal or group library, discover papers in the global catalog, create and update citation records, organize folders, upload or download PDF attachments, manage annotations, and handle trash cleanup.
Catalog search finds global bibliographic records that may not be in your account yet. Library search works on documents already saved in your personal or group Mendeley library.
Yes. A useful pattern is catalog discovery for new papers, library search for saved papers, folder organization for inclusion sets, and metadata cleanup before exporting or writing.
Yes. Files are separate from citation metadata: the agent can upload a PDF to an existing document, list file records, download file content as base64, or delete an attachment without deleting the citation record.
Yes. The server can list groups, create or update private and invite-only groups, inspect shared documents and folders, and delete a group when the collaboration space itself should be removed.
Treat file deletion, document trash, and permanent trash deletion as separate actions. Soft-delete documents first, review trash, and permanently delete only when the citation record should not be recoverable.
It can download file content when the connected account has access, but the best workflow is targeted: find the relevant document, inspect or download the attached file, then summarize the specific paper.
They are not interchangeable. Document IDs, file IDs, folder IDs, annotation IDs, and group IDs refer to different object types and must be used with the matching tool.
Connect Mendeley to any MCP client in minutes
Model Context Protocol lets AI tools call external capabilities securely through a single URL. This MCP server groups tools behind an endpoint that many clients can use.
Updated May 2026: Add this MCP URL as a Custom Connector in Claude Desktop → Settings → Connectors. OAuth sign-in works the same as on Cursor and VS Code, and credentials rotate automatically. The .mcpb one-click installer remains as a fallback — see the Claude Desktop tab for both options.
Select ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code, or another tab for copy-paste config.
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